Twelve

Lewis talked as they climbed stairs to their office. Aragon went first, taking them two at a time, holding up for him at the landings.

“Celestial burial, the deceased giving their body to feed life in the sky. New Agey,” he said. “Very Santa Fe.”

“Worms go in, worms go out. Same difference. Nothing groovy about it, you don’t make up fairy tales about what’s really going on.”

“Tibetans with butcher knives—I guess you’d call them morticians—chop up the body and toss pieces to condors and vultures? Come on. That’s different.”

They reached their floor, pushed through fire doors and entered the hall to their office.

“Showing up in bird shit,” she said. “What a way to go.”

“Detective Aragon, you need some solid sensitivity training, get your mind right, this hostility towards other cultures. Bird shit to you. Enlightenment to someone else.”

Her comeback, telling him to suck a crystal and take a flying leap at a power vortex, never made it to words.

Joe Donnelly from Professional Standards was rifling a drawer in her desk. He had handled the investigation that almost drove her off the force ten years ago. He had dug deeper into her life than her bullet had traveled into the Lokos enforcer whose lawyer filed the complaint. When Donnelly was short on evidence, he tried to provoke her into making mistakes so he could riff off them and loop back into the excessive force charge. Only at the very end, when he had exhausted every false trail and run out of low-rent tricks did Donnelly morph from black-hooded persecutor to impartial judge.

Aragon wondered which Donnelly had showed up today.

“Glad to see you’ve started your investigation of Dewey Nobles’ interference in the Geronimo case,” she said. “You won’t find what you need in that drawer.”

Donnelly closed the drawer with his foot. He used the phone on her desk, dialed, spoke. “They’re here.”

Aragon had an idea who he had just called. But she had Donnelly’s ear until that person arrived.

“We have a brutally murdered woman, the killer observed fleeing the scene, two officers overhearing him detail his crime. He left evidence under the body, and in his pocket he had tiny bones from the victim’s head. And Dewey let him go.”

“You don’t know what those bones were,” Donnelly said. “Could have been chicken bones.”

Aragon pried a pencil from her desk organizer and rolled it across the blotter at him.

“Draw the incus.”

“What, like Machu Picchu?”

“In-cus. That stumps you, I’ll settle for stapes and malleus. Or the cochlea. Hint: a snail.”

“What’s she talking about Lewis?”

Lewis said, “We all thought they were bird bones. Until OMI found them missing. Then we put it together. Geronimo had bones from Linda Fager’s inner ear.”

Aragon pointed a finger at Donnelly. “What can we do to assist your investigation of gross misconduct that turned loose a killer who’ll probably kill again?”

“Knock it off,” Donnelly said. “Judge Diaz delivered a formal complaint to the Mayor. Shit rolls downhill. Nobles is on his way to suspend you while we feed the judge a tranquilizer. You didn’t help yourself last night.”

“What?” She took her chair to move Donnelly away from her desk.

“You checked in evidence after you had been taken off the Geronimo case.”

“It was biological material that would degrade. You wanted it hauled to the dump?”

“Showing off, playing the tape for everyone to hear, was a really stupid move,” Donnelly said, looking down at her in her chair. “Celebrating before you cross the finish line is never a good idea. Any dumbass who watches TV knows two sacred rules of criminal procedure cops can never, ever break: Miranda and attorney-client privilege.”

“I don’t watch TV.”

“Well, now you can start. You’ll have plenty of free time.” Dewey Nobles stood in the doorway. Aragon smelled his aftershave across the room. Christ. Clove and cinnamon shit. Salt and pepper hair, thick with gel. Skin tightened from his last bad investment in plastic surgery made him look like he was squinting into the sun. He stepped forward, the only guy in the building who wore wingtips, and dropped two envelopes on her desk. “Lieutenant Donnelly will contact you about a formal interview. Starting now, you’re both suspended. Be glad it’s with pay.”

Lewis swept the envelopes into his hand. “We’re not saying anything until formal notification of the Professional Standards charge and we have union representation.”

“Sounds like something you heard watching TV,” Nobles said.

“I only watch SpongeBob SquarePants. You remind me of Plankton.”

Nobles squinted harder at Lewis. “Well, you can now enjoy cartoons all day. I thought a family had made you just a little smarter. But only hours after I took you off the case, you’re leaning on OMI to prioritize the Fager autopsy.” He turned to Donnelly. “We need to maintain good relations with Judge Diaz. I expect your best with these two.”

“Good relations for what?” Aragon said. “Why kiss ass if it won’t get us someone like Geronimo?”

“Denise,” Donnelly said. “The suspension’s with pay. Don’t push it.”

He had only used her first name when he came around to her side at the end of his first investigation. It made her wonder again which Donnelly was in her office this morning.

“Detective Aragon,” Nobles said, lifting his chin, “Cody Geronimo is on the street not because of what my job requires of me. All you know is frontal assault. Scorched earth, nothing left standing when you’re in action. That style of police work does not produce desirable results in Santa Fe, New Mexico.”

Nobles left. Aragon wished he had taken his aftershave with him.

“Stay away from Geronimo.” Donnelly looked back and forth between the detectives.

“It’s not us you should be investigating,” Aragon said, not letting it go.

“Denise.” Donnelly opened his hands and tamped down air. “Just pack up and get out of here.” He lingered in the door to point his finger at her before he left.

Lewis hunched his shoulders and let them drop. He reached for the phone.

“I better let my wife know.”

Aragon eyed her partner. The Glock 19 high on his hip in a black leather holster, a sap inside his belt. The bulge of the five-shot revolver on his ankle. The shirt stretched across his powerful back.

“Yo, Lewis. SpongeBob?”

Lewis called his wife, Sandy, with the news. She told him he’d be getting a text of the shopping he could do with his suddenly free time. Aragon had not said a word since Donnelly left.

“How about joining us for dinner?” Lewis offered to get her talking. “You can relax. Get your mind off the job.”

“Cartoons and plates on our laps?”

“We eat at the table.”

“Glad we moved the Geronimo files to the car,” she said as she inspected her desk to see if Donnelly had taken anything. Then she read the notice of suspension. “I’m going to make the Honorable Judy A. Diaz a project. She goes on my to-do list.”

“Now as long as your arm.”

Lewis’s cell chirped. His wife’s text. He texted back to inquire if the soy milk should be nonfat and unflavored and where was he supposed to find something called Ezekiel bread. He and his wife went back and forth finalizing the shopping list as he watched Aragon unlocking the big drawer in her steel desk. She removed the black plastic case for her pistol and a stack of ammo boxes. She got busy loading extra magazines.

“I take it you won’t be joining us?” Lewis asked between negotiations with his wife.

Aragon didn’t answer until she had five loaded magazines on her blotter.

“Thanks for the offer. But talking sponges don’t do it for me.”